The women bared skin in burlesque shows, long before the practice evolved into modern
stripping.

“I don’t think today’s stripping is sexy, but back then it was,” said Leslie Zemeckis, author of
Behind the Burly Q, about the history of burlesque. “They were very much into the ‘tease,’
figuring out how little they could show.”

Zemeckis, the wife of director Robert Zemeckis and an actress who once performed a
burlesque-inspired solo show, spent two years interviewing the forgotten stars of the 1930s, ’40s
and ’50s. Their stories were often tragic and sometimes uplifting.

“It was an interesting art form, and I think it’s a shame that most of these artists had to live
with shame and be dismissed,” Zemeckis said.

From 2006 to 2008, she conducted more than 100 hours of interviews and edited them into a
documentary, which ran on Showtime in 2010 and is available on DVD.

When American burlesque came of age in the early 20th century, such shows were one of the few
places where one could see exposed flesh, and it became a rite of passage for high-school boys to
sneak into them. The shows, which often traveled, reached their height of popularity during the
Depression.

Burlesque followed a formula that lightened hearts: They were bawdy variety shows with
comedians, chorus girls, acrobats and novelty acts. Spice was added by a coy striptease or two. The
women picked their own music, choreographed their own acts and sewed their own elaborate costumes —
sequined dresses and Southern-belle gowns with hats and parasols.

“As we became a more permissive society, you start to see that burlesque can’t compete, so it
started to get rid of its chorus girls and comedians in favor of more strippers who are getting
away with as much as they can,” Zemeckis said.

“Alexandra’s gimmick was stripping to
Flight of the Bumblebee. She would rotate muscles with bows on certain parts of her body
in black light,” Zemeckis writes in the chapter “You’ve Gotta Have a Gimmick.”

Behind the Burly Q is at its most revealing when the women discuss their motivations for
getting into burlesque and talk about what they did later in their lives.

Beverly Anderson, who stripped as Beverly Arlynne, came from a conservative family in the San
Francisco Bay area and wanted to get into show business. But her hands were twisted from rheumatoid
arthritis, so she hid her infirmity by stripping with gloves on. She was always shy and slightly
ashamed; she didn’t tell her adult son about her past until a few years before Zemeckis interviewed
her. At that time, she was running a theatrical talent agency in New York.

Many burlesque artists came from poor, abusive families. A surprisingly large number of them,
including Starr and Storm, had been gang-raped at an early age. They came to burlesque as a way of
transcending their circumstances.

People often think of burlesque dancers as early feminists, Zemeckis said, but they didn’t see
themselves that way.

“They were surviving, whether they liked it or didn’t like it, but none of them ever talked
about being empowered.”